Three Mile Island investigator led community theater

He may have been a pioneer in the nuclear industry, but Donald R. Henderson’s first love was the arts.

When he retired almost 25 years ago, he and his wife, Sarah — who also shared his passion for the stage — spent their time bringing their love of theater and dance to local community productions.

Mr. Henderson was a cinematographer turned engineer. He developed the reactors for nuclear submarines and was part of the investigative teams that responded to the country’s worst nuclear accident at Three Mile Island.

A thespian and dancer even in his later years, he “had a left-right brain,” said his son Aland Henderson.

Donald R. Henderson died June 6 of heart-related illness. He was 86.

Though numbers and complex chemical equations filled most of his professional career, he was rarely at liberty to share the exploits of working in the nuclear engineering industry, especially when it came to investigating the accident at Three Mile Island, his son said.

“The problem with his job was he wasn’t allowed to talk about it until many years after he retired, and even that was a limited amount of information,” Aland Henderson said.

The family had plenty of other things to talk about. A popular one was how the kids were doing in school — discussions that took on a special light because Mr. Henderson and his wife each had ties to the school district their children attended. Mr. Henderson was a member of the Bethel Park School Board and his wife taught English at the high school.

Education occupied the bulk of the conversation at home, Aland Henderson said, but his parents frequently glided to other topics, usually dwelling on their shared extracurricular passion: theater.

It was, after all, how they met.

It was a production at the University of Rochester that brought them together. At the time, she was an English major and he was a chemical engineering student. Later, they would go on to help start Stage 62, a community theater in Bethel Park, now located in Carnegie.

“They loved musicals more than they loved plays. My dad actually performed in several other shows as a dancer. My mom was almost always the director or costume designer,” Aland Henderson said, adding that their favorite musical was “West Side Story.”

But to hear Aland Henderson tell it, Mr. Henderson’s parents pushed their son away from artistic pursuits when he was young. It was art — photography in middle school, cinematography in high school and theater throughout his college and adult life — that he wished to pursue professionally. But ultimately he took up engineering at his parents’ urging.

Reluctant though his entrance into the industry may have been, he left his mark. He worked at Westinghouse’s nuclear division in Idaho, and then moved to Pittsburgh, where he worked at Bettis Laboratories. At Bettis, he was instrumental in developing the reactors that power nuclear submarines.

Mr. Henderson, a veteran of the Korean War, enjoyed traveling, including going to Japan and Hawaii. When he and his wife retired, they bought an RV trailer and drove across the United States.

“My dad was big on making the genealogy, so they would make trips to investigate, to find gravestones and family.”

Ultimately, Aland Henderson said, “I think his greatest goal in life was to not waste life.”

He is survived by his three children: Aland, who lives in New Jersey; Libby, who resides in State College; and Jean, who lives in Bethel Park. Mr. Henderson has three grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Funeral arrangements were handled by the Paul L. Henney Memorial Chapel of Bethel Park. The family asks that donations are directed to the Sivitz Jewish Hospice in Squirrel Hill.